Jon, Erika, Adalie and Frankie
by Amelia Elizabeth
Summary: Part three, taking place roughly two years after the end of "Jon, Erika and Adalie," and four years after the original "Jon and Erika." As you might have guessed, this story is going to focus on the arrival of someone new in the Hernandez-Archer household and the changes it will bring to their work and home lives. More sweet family fluff.
1. Chapter 1

Jon, Erika, Adalie and Frankie

Part three, taking place roughly two years after the end of "Jon, Erika and Adalie," and three and a half years after the original "Jon and Erika." As you might have guessed, this story is going to focus on the arrival of someone new in the Hernandez-Archer household and the changes it will bring to their work and home lives. As always, I don't own them, because if I did, things would turn out just like this. Please read and review!

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"You look awful."

"Thank you."

"No I'm serious," Jon said as he sat down next to his wife on their old couch. They had finally gotten their two very active and very determined not-to-go-to-bed daughters down for the night after much struggling, whining and even a little bribery. It was the first time all day that they actually had a chance to talk to each other even though he had only been one office down from her all day at work but now all he could think about was how unwell Erika looked. Her skin was pale and she had pronounced dark circles under her eyes. Her hands felt clammy and she looked distracted. She hadn't eaten much at dinner but then again neither had he; Frankie had started throwing noodles at him and after that it was a struggle to maintain some semblance of cleanliness never mind meeting nutritional requirements. But he had a feeling that Erika's problem wasn't just from dinner.

"What's wrong?" he pressed.

"I'm just tired," Erika said with a sigh, taking up her customary position with her head resting gently on his shoulder.

"Have you been nauseous?" he asked.

"A little," she admitted.

"In the mornings?"

"Jon…." Erika's tone was a warning as she pursed her lips and glared at him.

"I'm just saying…"

"What are you saying, Jon?" She turned to him but the simple motion of moving her head caused a wave of dizziness to sweep over her. Jon watched as Erika groaned and leaned her head back against the couch, closing her eyes.

"Is it really bad?" he asked cautiously, placing a hand on her cheek.

"Mmm hmmm," she murmured.

"Here, let me get you some water," he said, walking over to the kitchen. As he filled her glass, he looked back to where his wife was now stretched out on the couch, her legs on the armrest and her arm draped over her eyes.

"Rike, I think we have to start thinking seriously about this."

"About what?" she muttered, not bothering to uncover her eyes.

"About going to a doctor."

"I've got the flu, Jon," Erika sighed resignedly. "This isn't what you think it is."

"Then what is it?" he handed her the glass and she managed to take a few sips before easing herself back down again.

"I just told you. It's the flu."

"And what if I think it's not?" he asked, holding the water glass for her again. She waved him off warily.

"You think I'm pregnant again."

"I didn't say that." She gave him a look. "Okay, well I was thinking it," he admitted. "You haven't felt this miserable since Frankie. And I know this has been going on for more than a week. This is every day, isn't it?"

She nodded. "Maybe."

"So why don't you want to find out?"

"Because I'm not pregnant."

"Erika!"

"We talked about this, Jon," she said, sitting up shakily. "We've got a two year old and a four year old, you're an admiral, Sam's retiring, now isn't a great time to think about adding a baby to the mix."

"I'm not thinking about adding a baby," he countered. "I'm saying that I think there is already one on the way."

"I think you're wrong," she muttered. "It's my body, I'm pretty sure I know what is going on inside of it." She folded her arms and turned away from him.

"Rike…"

"No!"

Jon tried a different tactic. "You know, I always thought that we should go for three. It would be a nice round number, another girl just like her sisters or maybe a boy finally. Adalie has been talking about it constantly."

"She has?" Erika asked softly, her frustration with him momentarily fading.

Jon nodded. "I think some of her friends at school are having babies in their families so she keeps asking me when you are going to have another."

"She isn't satisfied with the sibling she's already got?"

"Nope," he shook his head.

"We can't just have another child because our preschooler wants us too."

"We've done worse."

"Like what?" Erika asked, a tired smile playing across her face.

"Oh, I don't know, Rike, pick something," he sighed. "How about having a baby while we were both commanding starships? Or having another one while one of us was still commanding a starship and the other one was back on Earth? At least this time we'll both be here."

"This time?" Erika asked incredulously. "What do you mean this time? There is no this time. There is no way I'm pregnant."

"Fine," Jon folded his arms and stared at her. "Take a test."

"What?"

"If you are so sure, go prove it."

"I don't have to prove it."

"Then there is no way to deny that you could be pregnant right now."

"Oh my god you are infuriating! Why can't you just get pregnant and have number three yourself?" Erika practically shouted as she stormed over to the kitchen. Jon rushed after her and managed to get her to stop slamming the dishes together long enough not to wake the girls. Thank god she didn't break anything. Resignedly, she set down the dishes and leaned into his arms.

"Hon, what are you afraid of?" he asked softly, holding her shoulders.

"I don't think we'll be able to handle three so close together," she whispered, her voice wavering and in that moment Jon saw tears well up in her eyes. "What if I am, Jon?"

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he said, holding her in his arms and gently stroking her long brown hair. "We're doing just fine with the girls. Another baby isn't going to change that. We might be a little more tired than we are right now and yes at first things are going to be a little crazy but we'll get through it. I would love to have another little one and I think you would too." He paused, remembering something. "You were scared with Adalie, weren't you?"

"That was different," Erika insisted. "She was our first. I had had the miscarriage before. I had no idea what to expect and there were so many hormones I just couldn't…" her voice trailed off.

"And you were absolutely terrified to tell anyone with Frankie," Jon continued.

"Are you trying to say that it is normal for me to freak out like this before we have a baby?" Erika gave in and graced him with a lopsided smile.

Jon kissed her on the forehead. "Something like that."

"You are so sure of yourself, aren't you?" she asked. "You are so sure I'm pregnant and so sure that everything will always turn out just fine. What happened to the captain who used to expect the worst in every single situation?" She reached up to smooth his hair back.

"He learned that everything does work out eventually," Jon answered.

Erika took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. "I think you are right."

"Right about what?" he asked, confused.

"I think I'm pregnant," she admitted with a small smile. "And you've still got a noodle in your hair."

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	2. Chapter 2 - 12 weeks

Chapter 2 – 12 weeks

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"Daddy?" Adalie asked as she sat down on the floor next to him, crossing her legs and putting her hands in her lap.

"What is it, kiddo?" Jon asked.

"Sing my favorite song?"

"Of course I will," he said, as he began to slowly strum along on the guitar. Addie flashed him a brilliant smile and scooted over to be closer to him. Jon leaned over and kissed her on the head.

Music had been a part of the girls' lives since the day they were born. When Adalie was just an infant and rather colicky, Jon had started singing to her each night as he held her in his arms and willed her to fall asleep. Together they would walk back and forth across their living room floor, careful not to wake Erika upstairs. Adalie seemed to enjoy hearing her father's voice and even if she wouldn't go back to sleep, she would look up at Jon and watch him intently.

He and Erika had made a deal when each of the girls were born; if they needed to be fed, it was Erika's turn and if it was anything else, it was his. That meant that it was Jon who spent most of the late nights with a restless baby in his arms, pacing around the apartment, sometimes trying to get work done, but most of the time failing miserably. Sometimes the only thing that worked was singing to his daughters.

When the girls got older, he taught them to sing with him. He would get out his old guitar and sit on the floor so that they could see how his fingers moved and strummed to make the music. Adalie had been fascinated by it all. At first, she didn't want to sing along. She would just watch him, mesmerized by the movements of his hands and occasionally trying to replicate it on her own little guitar that Trip had got her. She loved to dance along while Jon played and as soon as she learned the names of her favorite songs, she would request them over and over and over again. Just like with the books, Adalie was content to let her father or anyone else for that matter, sing the same song again and again.

Frankie was a little different. She didn't have the same patience that her sister had and often got up to toddle around the living room while Jon was playing. She would always come back to him, though, and she would notice if he stopped playing. She started singing along with him right away and by now she had a favorite spot to enjoy each of their little concerts. As her father sat on the floor, she would stand behind him and wrap her arms around his shoulders, leaning into him so that she could see what he was doing from the same angle as he had. Whenever he asked her if she liked the song, she would shyly duck her head into his shoulder and nod quietly before patting him on the head to signal that she wanted him to start again. Frankie too had her favorites and that didn't include her father actually stopping the music.

While Frankie held on to him tightly, Addie, who had just turned four, was learning how to strum along on the "big guitar" while Jon held his fingers tightly against the frets for each note. Sitting directly opposite him, she would reach over with her thumb and forefinger and strum when Jon told her to. Together they were haltingly playing the blues.

He wasn't sure how he had gotten the girls started on the blues. It wasn't something that he was particularly good at playing but the strong rhythm and the regular melodies resonated with both girls and it became the style that they requested most. Adalie would sometimes make up her own words along with her father and they would sing about the "little sibling blues," the "too cold for the park blues," and unfortunately the "Daddy has to leave on a spaceship blues." It wasn't very often that Jon was dispatched to review his ships firsthand but to the girls it was often enough.

He would call them every night just as they were going to bed and sometimes he and Erika would arrange it so he could call first thing in the morning, but it was a long separation all the same. Adalie only barely remembered when her father was Captain of the Enterprise, but Frankie had had both her parents planet-side her whole life. At only two years old, she didn't really understand that the quarterly trips out to the field were a normal part of her father's job and she would usually throw a tantrum each time. It had surprised him the first time she had done that. Adalie had been an unusually calm toddler, taking everything in with a strong degree of rationale and logic that even a Vulcan would be impressed by. He and Erika used to laugh and wonder where on Earth, or maybe not even Earth, she had learned that sort of acceptance of things. Perhaps it had been because from the day she was born her father was away for months at a time while her mother was stationed back on Earth. Perhaps it was because she somehow understood why her father was always gone and that he would be coming back soon. Perhaps it was because she had a group of loving adults around her at all times. Regardless, Frankie didn't inherit it.

Frankie Archer was her mother in almost every way. She looked like Erika with her soft brown eyes and dark hair, now currently tied up into a little faucet on the top of her head. She was stubborn and determined and very much aware of everything that was going on around her. She knew everyone's name and learned to request her favorite people by the time she could talk. Aside from her parents who she rarely allowed out of her sight, she adored Trip Tucker and Veronica Fletcher. Jon thought it was hilarious that her favorite people were the former first officers of her parents. Trip loved the girls more than anyone could even imagine possible. He spent the majority of his shore-leave from Enterprise every few months camped out on their living room floor, playing with the girls for hours on end, letting them climb all over him and happily obliging when they made him put them to bed each night. Ron on the other hand taught Adalie how to play poker when she was three and was well on her way to teaching Frankie how to double down on a bet. Jon wasn't sure how he felt about any of this.

As he gently encouraged Adalie as she strummed away with her chubby little fingers, Jon realized that his tradition of singing with his girls had started long before they were born. Just like her daughters, Erika was a difficult person to get to settle down and this was all the more true when she was pregnant. One of the only ways that he could get her to rest and relax was if he brought the guitar out and played while she was lying on the couch. Erika would listen intently as he sang, with one hand on her belly feeling the baby's movements. He always claimed that both of the girls loved to listen to their dad. Erika said that he just put them to sleep, which she was fine with.

"Do you know I used to sing to you guys just like this when you were in your mother's tummy?" he asked the girls. Frankie head-butted his shoulder and giggled but Adalie nodded. "And do you remember when we used to sing to Frankie, Addie?"

"Before she was born?" Adalie asked.

"That's right. When she was very, very tiny, we used to sing to her in mama's belly."

"I remember."

He had been throwing in little hints like this to the girls for the last few weeks. Ever since Adalie had totally blown any chance they had of keeping things secret when Erika was pregnant with Frankie, they had decided to wait until Erika was at least showing before talking to the girls. But he wanted them to be prepared or at least familiar with the idea so he would remind Addie from time to time about what things were like before and right after Frankie was born. And with Frankie they would practice putting all of her baby dolls to bed each night, rocking them like a newborn and singing them to sleep. He hoped that the announcement that they would be having a new little brother or sister would be something that would excite the girls. Addie hadn't really had much of a response when they told her about Frankie; she had just nodded and then went back to playing. Frankie, on the other hand, was not a fan of change. Jon made a mental note to include as much special alone time with his second daughter as he could to help her feel that she wasn't being forgotten.

"Play again?" Frankie asked, and Jon realized he had come to the end of their favorite song.

"Okay," he said with a smile, "I'll play it again." He began to pick out the tune and this time both girls started singing along right way.

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	3. Chapter 3 - 17 weeks

Chapter 3 – 17 weeks

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"Erika?"

"Mmmfffff?"

"Are you awake?"

"If I say no, will you go back to sleep?"

"I think they are going to retrofit my ship."

Now Erika actually opened her eyes. Her husband was lying next to her but he was wide-awake. He had one hand propped behind his head and the other was holding a padd that he had probably just finished reading.

"What are you talking about?" she asked as she placed her hand on his chest.

"It is a study report," he said handing her the padd. She peered at it through the darkness.

"Let's pretend I can't see in the dark."

"… about the possibility of retrofitting the entire NX-class to have a secondary hull," he sighed as she handed it back to him. She had a feeling that he had probably memorized the full report.

"A secondary hull?" she asked. Engineering was not her thing. She had Jon for that and Jon had Trip. And engineering was certainly not her thing at this hour of the night.

"Some scientists got the bright idea to separate the warp core from the rest of the ship so that in an emergency we can safely isolate it without fear of contamination. I think they envision it to look like a tin can strapped on to the belly of the saucer section."

Erika frowned as she adjusted one of the pillows resting beneath her shoulder. "That sounds like a brilliant idea."

"It will ruin the entire look of the ship!" Jon complained, practically throwing the padd across the room. It landed with a clatter and Erika held her breath for a moment, waiting to see if it woke up either of the girls. Thankfully it did not. Neither of the girls had quite mastered their mother's skill of being able to sleep while their father threw his water polo ball against the wall but since he had taken to bringing the ball to his office he was now prone to throwing other things across their bedroom.

"But this is just a study report by one of the science divisions, right?" she asked, stretching to relieve some of the soreness in her back.

"Yes, but I have a feeling that…"

"Jon…" Erika gave him a glare. "It is four in the morning. Could we have this discussion once we know for certain that they are going to push this retrofit on all the NX-class ships? For all we know, Sam is going to take one look at this and toss it across the room the same as you did."

"I think it is a waste of time and money,' Jon said.

"Of that I am aware," Erika rolled back over and tried to go to sleep. She had a feeling that someone had other plans.

"I mean we spent decades working on the NX. Not just the engine, you know. That thing represented the biggest scientific undertaking in the last 100 years. But everything else on those ships, the navigational arrays, the communications systems, the hull plating, it was all from the leading edge of scientific development."

"Yes, Admiral, I know," Erika said, her voice muffled by the pillow. "I was there."

"And the testing we put that design through before we even thought about putting a living being inside?" he continued passionately, apparently not hearing her. "We had every Ph.D. on the planet flown in to look it over. And now they are telling us that it isn't good enough anymore? Those ships have been out there for almost eight years and now they are going to march in here and try to redo everything. It would be easier to make an entirely new ship. Do you know how challenging it will be to extract a warp core engine and then remount it within the same ship and rewire all the connections to the nacelles? It will be at least a year of work on just one ship and they want to do it on all eight of them! We don't have the docking facilities to even handle that sort of workload I mean…"

She tried to listen to his arguments but the truth was she knew all of them because they had had this discussion before. Jon loved the NX design and so did she but every time Starfleet proposed a remodel or a retrofit that hadn't been Jon's idea, he went ballistic. The design was almost sacred to him. He couldn't stand for anything to compromise the integrity of the ships that had done so much for Starfleet.

For Erika, the feeling was a little more basic. She just liked the way the ships looked. They were clean and elegant, a sharp departure from anything Starfleet had built in the past. They were distinctly human and one look could instantly tell you what planet they came from. If someone wanted to haphazardly stick another component on to the ship it would make the thing look awful, plain and simple. She could try to tell Jon that. She could even promise to talk to Sam about it in the morning. But right now, if she didn't get some sleep, she was fairly certain neither one of them would make it until morning.

"… and they are pushing this new secondary hull design on all the other classes too," Jon was saying. "The Agronas, the Intrepids, even the new Legorsas and Hellenics are going to have this thing thrust upon them."

"Who are they?" Erika finally said.

"Hmm?"

"Who are they?" she repeated, turning over to face him again. "You keep saying that 'they' are pushing this design. Who is?"

"Dr. Oppenheimer and probably the whole science division," Jon muttered.

"Do they have Jeffries on board yet?"

Jon shook his head.

"Then go back to bed. As long as he is still on your side, they aren't going to do anything to those ships."

"Erika…" he protested.

"Good night, Jon," she rolled over and closed her eyes. But now that she was awake, she realized that she had to go to the bathroom. She swore silently and got up.

"Where are you going?" her husband asked as she stood by the nightstand as she got her balance. She'd been through this twice before, the shifting center of gravity, the dizziness whenever she stood up, the clumsiness. But it still managed to surprise her. She had nearly fainted the other morning when she had been sitting on the floor playing with Frankie and then suddenly stood up. Jon, of course, had panicked.

"I'm pregnant," she huffed. "Where do you think I'm going?"

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked softly and she nodded with a tired smile. It never fails, she thought to herself. The easiest way to distract Jon from whatever he had gotten himself worked up about was to bring his attention back to the fact that she was carrying their baby. Sometimes when he got home from work and was ranting about something, all it took was for her to place his hand on her midsection, still small and only barely starting to show, for him to calm down. He loved when she was pregnant, she smiled as she made her way over to the bathroom. Why hadn't she thought to remind him of that when he started on this tangent?

"Jon," she said, standing in the doorway.

"Yes?"

"I don't mean to trivialize what you are talking about. It is a very serious issue that we should talk about, preferably when I'm fully awake."

"I know," he said as he watched her.

"There are a lot of things that have to happen before any work actually begins on those ships. You'll get the chance to let them know how you feel about this."

"Thanks, Rike."

"And Jon?" she said as she turned on the bathroom light.

"Hmmm?"

"You've got to stop calling it your ship. You're an admiral now. They are all your ship."

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	4. Chapter 4 - 21 weeks

Chapter 4 – 21 weeks

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"Hey, are you ready?" Jon called as he came back down the stairs, Frankie dangling under one arm.

"Am I ready to see how huge I've gotten in the last week?" Erika answered back. "I guess now is as good a time as any."

"Good." Jon plopped Frankie on the couch with a soft thud and she laughed infectiously. "Keep an eye on your sister, would you?" he said, conspiratorially nodding at Adalie. Frankie nodded solemnly as her older sister sat down next to her on the couch.

"Ready, munchkin?" Jon asked Adalie as he pulled out the tape measure.

"Ready!" she held up a "thumbs up," and Frankie tried to do the same, alternately raising one hand and then the other trying to get her thumb to cooperate. Jon just laughed and gave both girls a quick kiss on the forehead. "Let's measure Mom."

They had started this back when Erika was still on Columbia and Jon had been on Enterprise. He had been telling her how much he missed seeing her every day and watching as her belly grew as her pregnancy progressed. So she had come up with a plan to make him feel like he was right there with her. Once a week, she would get out a tape measure and together they would measure her belly. Sometimes Jon had been impatient and so even before it was measuring day, he would ask her to turn sideways so he could see for himself. Soon, almost all of their calls began with a "profile shot."

When they were together, Jon would be the one to take the measurements. For each baby, her sister-in-law had given her a book in which she could write all the information down and week by week they would add in details of how her body was changing. At first, Erika had thought it was silly. She was getting fatter; there wasn't much need to document that, it was fairly self-evident. But it had been important to Jon, so she went along with it. By the second pregnancy, Erika found herself looking forward to their weekly ritual. It was something that Adalie could take part in as well as she helped her father. By the third pregnancy, it had become a family tradition.

Adalie, armed with her crayons and paper, was keeping her own records of their findings. She drew pictures, scribbled notes and patiently explained to Frankie what they were doing. As young as she had been when her baby sister was born, Adalie seemed to remember it all. Just as before, she was very patient and calm about the whole experience, asking questions about when she would be able to feel the baby kick, where the baby would sleep when it was born, and always what was the baby going to be.

They were going in for that appointment tomorrow morning and Erika had a feeling that she wasn't the only one who was going to be too excited to sleep. Adalie had begged to be allowed to come along and after some serious negotiating (another wonderful skill she had picked up from Captain Fletcher) they had finally agreed that as soon as they finished at the doctor's office, they would come pick her up from pre-school to celebrate. Adalie had seemed satisfied by this, for now, but Erika was prepared for a renewed struggle when they went their separate ways in the morning.

Now Erika stood patiently in the center of the living room, her hands by her waist smoothing out the fabric of the shirt she was wearing. Jon wrapped the tape measure around her body and looked up at her with a smile.

"Okay, Addie," he asked again. "Ready?" Adalie nodded, holding her crayon high above her head to demonstrate. "Mom's belly is 38 inches today." He held up the tape measure so the girls could see it. He then picked up a pen and wrote the number largely and clearly in the book so that Adalie could copy it in hers. He then handed the tape measure back to Erika.

Erika stared at it for what felt like ages, her eyes wide. They had looked in Addie's and Frankie's books earlier to see how she had been doing at this time in both of their pregnancies and she hadn't been nearly this large. Everyone told her that she was bound to be larger this time around but she hadn't really believed them until now.

"Rike?" Jon called from the couch as he sat down. "What are you doing?"

"Do you think I'm too big?" The look her husband gave her told her that he knew this was a loaded question as much as she did. Three pregnancies and he had learned from experience.

"You are beautiful," he said motioning for her to come join him. "Absolutely beautiful. Girls, don't you think your mother is beautiful?"

"You're like a princess," Adalie proclaimed and that put a stop to Erika's worrying. If her four-year-old was comparing her to a princess, than all must be right in the world.

Erika suddenly stopped and put her hand on her bump. She had been feeling the first flutters of movement for a few days now and sometimes if Jon was very patient he could feel them too.

"Is he moving again?" Jon asked.

"How do you know this one is a he?"

"Well, is he?"

Erika nodded as she sat down on the couch next to him. Frankie immediately crawled into her lap and snuggled into her arms. Erika bent down to give her youngest a kiss on the cheek. Frankie giggled and wrapped her fingers around her mother's hand, the way she had seen her father do it many times before. Frankie it seemed noticed everything.

"Why are you so convinced we are having a boy this time around?" Erika asked as she rested her head on her husband's shoulder.

"It isn't some futile attempt to even things out around here, if that is what you are worried about," Jon said with a laugh. Frankie seemed to agree with her father's sense of levity.

"I'm serious, Jon. What is so different about my pregnancy to have you so convinced?"

Jon shrugged. "Intuition?"

Erika pursed her lips. "You are about as intuitive as a …."

"Rike? Little ears?" Jon quickly reached over to cover Frankie's ears with his hands in anticipation of what his wife might say. In addition to noticing everything, Frankie repeated everything, something they should have been prepared for after Adalie. Somehow though they had forgotten until Frankie had announced at dinner one night that she was "damn tired." Erika had had to leave the room to keep from laughing as Jon tried to salvage the situation. Apparently one of them had been complaining lately about being "damn tired" every evening and someone else had caught on. Adalie had thought it was hysterical and Frankie wasn't sure what the big deal was.

"I'm just saying that you aren't known for your predictive abilities," Erika said in a bit of a whisper.

"No, but you are," he answered. "What do you think this one is going to be?" he asked as he placed a gentle hand on her belly.

"Active," she said with a grin.

"We are going to be in trouble with three of these, aren't we?" Jon said as Frankie pressed her face close to his and tugged one of his ears.

"No more than usual."

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	5. Chapter 5 - 25 weeks

Chapter 5 – 25 weeks

Jonathan Archer folded his arms against his chest and frowned. He leaned closer to the two-way glass that separated the observation deck from the training room, hoping that things would get turned around. He could have hoped that the Vulcan Science Directorate would believe in time travel for all the good it did him.

The simulation room was filled with the crew of the Starship Agrona, back on Earth for a limited retrofit and confab, and someone had decided that it would be a brilliant idea to put them through the latest training program. In theory it was a good idea: the crews that were preparing to leave home and take up the fight in space spent hours each day in the simulators, rehearsing and practicing each and every maneuver that they would be expected to make, all under the watchful eye of the program administrator and the fleet admiral. Supposedly, it only made sense that the crews that were already out in deep space be put through the same new training protocol to keep up with new advancements. When ships were in drydock, it was virtually impossible to do the training runs onboard so an elaborate replica of each of the major ship classes had been built. This way the crews could practice worst-case scenarios over and over without actually putting their ship through that sort of stress. In practice, it meant that officers who were expecting to get a little shore leave found themselves trapped inside a windowless room while their ships kept blowing up.

The crew of the Agrona was practicing a new protocol: the emergency establishment of a command center in engineering after a catastrophic loss of the bridge. Out of sheer desperation, several crews had been forced to create such a set up, but the Admiralty wanted to establish a clear set of directives to be followed in the event of such a situation. So it was Jon's team that was tasked with putting together the procedures, mostly because Jon had been one of the captains who had set up a temporary command center in his engineering bay when his crew was forced to evacuate the bridge. And now it was Jon's team who was tasked with training the rest of the officer corps on those procedures. Things had been going well, until now.

"How are they doing?" he heard his wife ask from behind him. He turned to see her standing there, looking through the window with a worried expression on her face. Veronica had been her First Officer and Erika wanted to see her get through the exercise without killing anyone. Jon just wanted to see her pass.

"She's not there yet," he frowned. Erika came up beside him and peered through the glass more closely. She checked the mission clock and Jon did too, mentally calculating how much longer this thing was going to take. The exercise had started on the bridge when the operations officer would report a massive coolant leak threatening to make the deck uninhabitable. Before ordering the crew to evacuate, the captain would have to transfer all the command computer functions to engineering and then lock out the system. Veronica had done all that. She had gotten her officers safely to engineering and had begun an evacuation of the nearby decks just in case the leak spread through the ventilation system. Now her officers were taking their new stations and trying to get everything back under control.

"Should we give them a malfunctioning thruster?" one of his test controllers asked him. They had done this particular trick on every other crew so far. One thruster was programmed to fire sporadically, thereby messing up their course trajectory and testing whether the crew could both control the direction of the ship and navigate in an unfamiliar place. The three Legorsa crews had all passed this part of the test easily with only one of them requiring a second pass through. Jon nodded to the controller who began hitting the proper commands on his console.

Instantly, there was a change in the simulation room. Officers and crewmen began running around like crazy, calling out contradictory orders as the ship began to spin out of control. In the confusion, one of the communications arrays had been temporarily shut down and if this had been a real situation, half of their telemetry data would have vanished. Jon pushed his headphones closer to his ear and tried to listen in to the activity.

"… getting pretty close to gimbal lock…"

"… half the nav data didn't make it in the transfer from the bridge…"

"… emergency alarms won't shut off…"

"… we don't have a clear channel to…"

And in the middle of all this confusion was Captain Veronica Fletcher, looking ready to do just as Erika feared.

"Get that thruster shut down right now!" she barked, shooting a death glare up at the observation window. Jon winced. She knew he was playing hardball with her. The Agrona crew and their back up had passed all their tests so far but Jon hadn't been satisfied.

"I want a position check, right now!" she ordered, as her crew raced from console, trying to get things under control. "How far have we gone off course?"

No one said anything.

"Come on!" she yelled. "Give me a position check."

"Um, I think the computer's wiped?" one of the junior techs called out in an uncertain voice. Jon's jaw dropped. He hadn't ordered that call, had he? He turned to see his wife, one hand on her burgeoning belly as she leaned over a control board, flipping various switches and dials.

"What did you do?" he muttered.

"I lost her nav data," Erika said simply and she returned to join him by the window.

"But she transferred the command functions just fine."

"I know," Erika said. "Out there, it doesn't matter. She needs to know that. She's running around in there like she's knows it's a simulation. She has to take this seriously."

"She's going to kill you."

Erika said nothing and switched her headset back on to here the frantic chatter of the sim room.

"I'm sorry, Captain, we don't have the data to tell you where we are," her navigation officer was saying.

"Oh for gods sakes, LOOK OUT A GODDAMN WINDOW!"

That was it. Jon reached over and hit the "abort" button on the master control display. The alarms clanged and the control officer came on over the microphone to tell the crew what had happened. Jon muttered to tell Captain Fletcher to meet him in his office immediately and walked out of the room, with Erika right behind him.

"So do you want to tell her what you did back there?" Jon said angrily as he closed the door to his office.

"She lost control of her crew and herself," Erika said easing herself onto the couch.

"And how much of that was because you decided to throw her a curve?"

"She'd had too many perfect runs. She needed to face something she had never dealt with before."

"I get that, Rike, I really do," he said, sitting down next to her and placing a hand on her belly. "But couldn't you have at least warned me before you blew up my training room?"

"She'd been doing really well, hadn't she?" Erika asked.

Jon nodded. "This was our third run this morning and each time her crew got things settled down very quickly. She wanted to be done after the second run, but I made them go back in again," he sighed. "I guess this is what I get, huh?"

Erika brushed his hair back from his face. "Apparently, the controller also needed to be tested to see how he faced something he had never dealt with before."

"We've only got four more days before she's sent back."

"She'll be ready," Erika said reassuringly. Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

"You couldn't have waited until Project NZ had come up and given me that one?" Veronica groaned as she entered the room. Jon gave his wife a half smile and shook his head.

"Come on in, Ron. Let's talk about what happened," he said as she shut the door.

###


	6. Chapter 6 - 29 weeks

Chapter 6 – 29 weeks

A/N: This one started off as just one little moment. Can you guess which part that was? – Amelia

###

"Before you go, do you have a moment?" Sam Gardner asked her as she was leaving the briefing. She groaned silently. The briefing had been long and her back was getting sore. She was looking forward to getting to lie down before her next round of meetings. But the look on Sam's face told her that this probably couldn't wait.

"What do you need, sir?" she replied, following him into his office. He shut the door and turned to face her.

"You know I'm retiring in a few months, don't you?" he said. It wasn't really much of a question. Most of Starfleet knew that Sam was leaving. It was a loss to the entire community and one that Erika was still struggling to accept. She had been Sam's deputy since Adalie was born. He had specifically recruited her when she asked for a shore assignment during her first pregnancy. At first, she thought he must be crazy. She wasn't an engineer and she sure as hell wasn't going to be much help developing and testing starships. But Sam was insistent. And she had been pregnant and really didn't have the energy to argue with him.

And it had worked. Just as she had been her husband's right hand out in deep space, she quickly settled into her role as Sam's chief of staff and the de facto second in command of the NX Program. She ran his command like she ran her ship, with strength, hard work and a lot of sarcasm. She was comfortable in the role of the peacemaker and the one who followed through with the myriad projects that Sam was overseeing. She enjoyed getting to watch a ship go from the drawing board to spacedock and then stepping back as their captains took their place in the massively complicated space ballet that her husband coordinated.

She looked back at Sam and smiled sadly. "Yes sir."

"But what you probably don't know is that I'd like you to take over for me."

Erika's jaw dropped. "What do you mean take over?"

"I mean," he said sitting down and folding his hands in his lap, "that I want you to assume the title as head of the NX Program. For goodness sakes, Erika, you are practically doing the job now. The only difference is the rank." Sam gave her a half smile as she awkwardly lowered herself into a chair next to him.

"This job, this position is changing just as our fleet is changing," Sam said, gesturing at the plans strewn across his desk. "I need to know that there will be someone here who can continue to push these ships through their development phase and train their officers before we hand it off to the operational commands."

"You mean before Jon gets his hands on them?" Erika laughed. Her husband was the head Fleet Operations and in charge of assigning missions and deployment schedules. If Captains and their crews weren't ready to do what he needed them to, they were likely to find themselves in a rough situation.

"Something like that," Gardner conceded.

Erika thought about what he was telling her. The NX Program was the project she had devoted the majority of her career towards and now… She gave her head a little shake. There were nine NX ships now: Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavor, Orion, Excalibur and Constellation. That meant nine crews to keep track of, nine captains to watch over, nine warp cores that all might decide to have trouble at the same time. But, with nine ships, she would have a greater opportunity to test things out than Sam ever had. Protocols developed on one ship could be tested and put into practice by her sisters, while other ships rehearsed with entirely different procedures just to see which one was best. The NX captains would be able to spread out their deployments more, which meant she would have to work with them to help them understand the risks and issues that came up with isolated positioning. She would be juggling the staffing requirements for twice as many vessels as there had been when she'd had Columbia. Now officers and crewmen were transferring between assignments quickly and on a regular basis, learning their skills on one ship before moving on to another to fill a need. Enterprise and Columbia had had very little room for advancement but with hundreds of new positions and commissions, officers were being trained and promoted as quickly as their superiors could.

She had watched Sam for years in this job. At first, she hadn't understood him, hadn't understood why when all the other NX pilots vied for the coveted captain's chair on the NX-01, Sam had not gone after it. Even when he found out that he was the first choice of the Vulcans, Sam Gardner had not wanted to serve in deep space. He was an organizer, a structure builder. When Jon left spacedock all those years ago, Sam had turned to creating an operational hierarchy within the fledgling Starfleet. While Jon wrote the procedures on how crews should operate, Sam codified them and added the rules and regulations about how the "shore-duty" half of the organization would function. In essence, they were two parts of the same whole, but Erika knew that neither man had seen it like that in the beginning. In the early years there had been brutal arguments between the field officers and the ones who stayed behind, and it was one of the reasons why her husband had been so surprised when they finally offered him the admiralty. In the end though, Sam Gardner had become one of her husband's most trusted confidants inside or outside of the fleet. It was Sam who convinced Jon to accept the promotion and Erika had a feeling it was Sam who was going to do the same for her.

"Are you sure about this, sir?" she asked, her normal confidence slipping for a moment.

"100% certain," he answered with a careful nod. "You are ready for this, I know you are. And you've earned it."

"And you think Starfleet is ready for its first pregnant admiral?" she sighed, rubbing her swollen abdomen for emphasis.

"Why not? You were our first pregnant captain." Sam shrugged his shoulders.

"Captain Hernandez? You're needed back in your office." An aide with a troubled look on his face stuck his head in the doorway. "Captain Fletcher is…." his voice trailed off, meaning only one thing.

Erika glanced at Sam. "Go. We'll talk about this more later," he said, nodding to her and helping her to a standing position, one hand carefully resting on her back.

"I'm on my way," she replied to the aide. She turned back to Sam, one hand slowly rubbing small circles on her stomach. "Do all my promotions have to happen when I'm expecting?"

Sam laughed. "So you'll think about it?"

"I'll think about it," she promised.

As she walked back to her office, she tried to think about what had just happened. She'd have to tell Jon. She'd have to tell her staff. She'd probably have to tell the girls. She realized with some surprise that she wanted this, more than she had even thought possible. There would be things she would have to give up, she knew, but as she had told her husband when they had had this discussion two years earlier, this was something she had been working towards her whole career. She wasn't going to let it pass her by.

Erika walked in the door of her office and stopped. "You rang?"

Veronica jumped up from the couch. "I need you." Erika narrowed her eyes a bit. "Or more specifically, I need your super power."

"What do you want to know?" Erika sighed. She knew what was coming. One of her deputies had realized that with Erika's pregnancy had come some uncanny predictive abilities and had been quick to tell the rest of the division. Now she had officers coming into her office at all hours asking her the strangest questions. She was beginning to get sick of it.

"If they are going to put one of those god awful secondary hulls on my ship," Ron grumbled. She looked up at Erika hesitantly. "It's still kick 'yes', no kick 'no', right?" Erika nodded. Carefully, as if she was afraid that she might break something, Veronica placed her hand on her former captain's rounded belly and closed her eyes.

"Baby boy Archer, will someone be attaching a superfluous tin can to my hull?" There was no response. "Oh thank god," Ron muttered as she got up to leave.

"Aren't you forgetting someone?" Erika said, folding her arms across her chest and frowning.

"Thanks, Rike!" Veronica gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and dashed out, leaving a stunned Erika standing alone in the center of her office.

The magic eight ball belly had been a hit at the last officers' ball. Erika had not been pleased. Jon had just laughed. But maybe they were on to something.

Quietly, Erika held her palm to her belly. "Hey there, little boy," she whispered. "What do you think? Should I take the job?" She felt a soft but resounding kick. "That's what I was thinking too."

###


	7. Chapter 7 - 33 weeks

Chapter 7 – 33 weeks

A/N: this one was a prompt from the always-wonderful Bones when I mentioned that I was struggling to write the next chapter. She came up with this and half a second later I was back at my computer typing away. So thank you darling for making this little bit come together.

###

"Hi, we're home," Jon said as he held the door for his wife. Erika stepped gingerly over the threshold, her hips swaying and her long hair tumbling over her shoulders. "Sorry we're late." He helped Erika slip off her coat and then stopped. Spread out in the middle of the living room was the new crib, or rather Jon thought, what remained of the crib. Railings and beams were tossed every which way as if a subspace eddy had crashed through. There was a crumpled wade of paper by his foot which he could only assume had been the instruction manual. Larger pieces of the railing were propped up against the stairs and various screws and bolts were spread all over the coffee table.

In the middle of all this was Veronica Fletcher, her head buried in a padd and mumbling slightly to herself. Porthos and Sadie were sitting on the couch, watching her warily as if she might explode at any moment. Off to her left, tucked in between the haphazardly tossed pieces of crib was Trip, stretched out on his back asleep. Frankie was easily sleeping on his chest and Adalie was curled up by his side. Jon was relieved to see that at least both girls were in their pajamas, but he frowned when he saw that his eldest was clutching a piece of the crib in her little arms instead of her usual stuffed animal.

"So…" Jon began.

"What the hell did you two do?" Erika snapped bluntly. Trip's eyes opened slowly.

"Oh you're home," he whispered, careful not to disturb the sleeping toddler in his arms as he sat up.

"This thing is a real piece of …" Veronica began before Erika held her hand up.

"What. Did. You. Do?" Erika repeated slowly, glaring at the two captains sitting on her floor.

"We thought it would be a nice surprise if we had this thing all set up for you by the time you got back," Trip explained. "Only…"

"Only what, Trip?" Jon asked, finally hanging the two coats up on the hat rack where several pieces of packing material had landed.

"Only the instructions were nearly impossible to read and someone ate half the pages," Trip shot a glance over at Sadie. "And then our little helpers decided to get involved." He looked down to brush the hair out of Frankie's eyes. "It was all over when this one started running around with one of the beams."

Jon sat down on the couch, his hand resting on Porthos' head. He looked up at Erika who just shook her head resignedly. They should have known something like this was bound to happen. There was a reason the two of them never had any time alone. Invariably when they came back to their house, everything seemed to have gone wrong. Murphy's law Erika called it. Frankie's law more like it, Jon smiled to himself.

Still, they had had a wonderful evening together, not once imagining the catastrophe waiting for them upon their return. When Trip and Veronica had offered to watch the girls one night Jon had practically jumped in the air with excitement. He wanted to do something nice for Erika, really nice before the baby was born. Erika was at 33 weeks now and with every passing day she seemed to be getting bigger and rounder. Jon knew it was only a matter of time before all of it, the swollen ankles, the sore back, the constant trips to the bathroom, became his fault. He had seen this happen before with each of Erika's previous pregnancies. Invariably, she would throw things at him because biology had declared that he wasn't the one who looked like they had eaten a watermelon whole. Jon knew that a little good karma could only help his chances of survival. On top of that, Erika was feeling a little randy of late and Jon was not going to pass up the opportunity to have and evening alone with her.

Dinner had been delicious; Erika had eaten all of hers and most of his before proclaiming that they needed to find ice cream immediately. Jon was so used to his wife and her ever-changing pregnancy cravings that he had laughed and told her that there was a shop right around the corner. In fact, he had chosen the restaurant specifically for its closeness to several of the items Erika often craved, namely ice cream, enchiladas and French fries. She had smiled and told him how much she adored him, and asked that he please pay so they could get a move on.

They had been reluctant to come back home, but Erika was getting tired and they both had work in the morning. And they didn't think it was fair to leave their two former first officers alone with their girls for too long. Jon looked around the room again at the wake of destruction. Obviously, it had been long enough.

"And you two thought that doing all of this would help?" Erika said now as she frowned and slowly eased herself down onto the couch. She turned to face her husband. "I swear to god, Jon, this crib has already been more trouble than it is worth."

Jon rolled his eyes in agreement. Ever since they had first realized that they were going to need a new crib for baby boy Archer, Jon had been dreading it. Not only were the memories of the struggle he had with Frankie's crib fresh in his mind, but he couldn't quite understand why the new baby couldn't just bunk with Frankie or, for that matter, why Frankie couldn't bunk with Adalie. But Erika just shook her head and told him that this baby was going to need his own space to sleep. And the job of picking out the new crib had fallen to Jon.

"So you know how Sadie takes up half the bed?" he had asked one night as Erika handed him a stack of baby clothes, all in various shades of blue. She had nodded slowly, unsure where he was going with this. Their dog Sadie was a snuggler and wasn't content unless she was right in the middle of the bed, paws splayed out to the side, chin resting on a pillow. At first it had been adorable. Porthos always slept at Jon's feet, refusing to leave that position so the fact that Sadie wanted to curl up right next to Erika was sweet. Then his wife got pregnant.

Erika was huge now, a fact that Jon had very nearly mentioned to his own peril the other night when Sadie had pushed him off the bed. The problem he was facing was two-fold. Erika had a legitimate need for half the bed: she simply wouldn't fit in less space. Sadie, on the other hand, had been spoiled into thinking that she deserved the other half of the bed. Jon had never enjoyed math but in this case he could add. With the puppy in the bed, Jon found himself relegated to the farthest edge and if the previous few weeks were any indication, if he wanted to get any sleep at all, he was going to have to reclaim some of the bed.

So he came up with what he thought was a wildly brilliant idea.

"I was looking at cribs and I found a pretty big one," Jon had continued, explaining his idea while his wife organized. "I was thinking that we could put Sadie and the baby in there."

Erika stopped what she was doing and turned to him, her eyes narrowing.

"I mean, she likes to snuggle and the baby is going to need someone to cuddle with so…"

"You're serious?" she asked.

Jon nodded, shrugging his shoulders. "I think it can solve two problems."

His wife folded her arms and gave him a look that often sent her officers running for cover. "You must be absolutely out of your mind."

"Erika…"

"You can't put the dog in the crib with the baby! What is wrong with you?" she had stormed out of the nursery.

"Erika! Erika!" he chased after her. "I don't see what the problem is!"

"Obviously!"

Erika had been so absolutely furious with him for even suggesting the thought that Jon had decided to make himself scarce for the rest of the day and took the girls over to visit Trip. It was then that Trip offered to his babysitting services and Jon had jumped at it. Trip had 'volun-told' Veronica and that had been that. Until the blasted crib had decided to ruin everything. Again.

"You two better clean this mess up before you leave," Erika sighed as she propped her feet up on the coffee table, careful not to displace any hardware.

"Yes sir," Trip nodded, sheepishly. He handed a still sleeping Frankie to Erika and Jon scooped up Adalie in his arms. Addie stirred a little in her sleep but quickly relaxed, her head resting on Jon's shoulder. Frankie on the other hand was perfectly content with her head pressed against her mother's growing belly.

"Do you ever feel like we really have four children?" Jon said as he watched Trip and Veronica get to work.

"All the time," Erika groaned.

###


	8. Chapter 8 - 36 weeks

Chapter 8 – 36 weeks

###

"Mama?"

"What is it, Addie?" Erika asked as she helped her four-year-old into her pajamas. She had long since grown out of the ones with all the dogs, which had been handed down to Frankie. Her favorite pajamas now had little bunnies on them, another gift from her brother.

"What will the baby look like?" Addie's words were slightly mumbled as she stuck her head through her shirt. Her mother smoothed out her rumbled hair with a laugh.

"I'm not sure, exactly, but I think he'll look a lot like you and Frankie did, dark hair and dark eyes. Your daddy jokes that my genes are taking over all our children." Erika smiled, remembering when they had found some of his old baby pictures and decided to compare them to the girls'. Both girls had looked decidedly more like Erika and Jon was jokingly hoping that his son would take after him. Erika wasn't so sure.

"Mama, how big will the new baby be?" Adalie asked.

"He'll be tiny, contrary to popular opinion," Erika muttered rubbing her ever-growing belly. After the debacle with the dog and the crib, Jon had actually started reading baby books, for the first time in three pregnancies. He had found that baby boys were likely to be bigger than their sisters and that their mothers would be hungry more often. Erika figured this was as good an explanation as any to why she was so huge this time around. With the girls, any weight that she gained contributed to an all-over rounded look that Jon simply adored. With this baby, it was her belly and only her belly that seemed to be growing.

"Really tiny? Like this?" Adalie held out her fingers about an inch apart.

"No, more like this," she said as she held Addie's hands roughly 18 inches apart. That was what the doctors said at her check up this morning.

"That looks big," Addie frowned.

"It feels big too!" Erika laughed as she placed her daughter's hands against her belly. "Right here," she said, tapping Addie's right hand, "is your brother's head. And over here are his feet. Can you feel them?"

Addie nodded, a slow smile spreading on her face. "Ow!" she gasped, as Erika felt a strong kick. "That hurt."

"You're telling me…" Erika sighed. "Okay, Ads, time for bed." She motioned to the bed and Adalie hopped up. She rested her head on her pillow and was just about to pull the blankets up over herself when she stopped.

"Mama?"

"Addie…."

"One more."

"Okay," Erika sighed as she folded her arms across her chest.

"Will Daddy be home when the baby comes?"

Erika had known this question was coming, ever since she had explained to the girls where Jon was. Adalie was old enough to know that if the baby was going to be coming very soon and her father was gone on a quarterly inspection, something wasn't right.

"Of course he will," Erika reassured her daughter.

"Promise?" Adalie asked.

"I promise," she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "You know, you sound just like your daddy did right before you were born."

"Really?" Addie's eyes brightened.

"Mmm hmmm," Erika said with a smile. "When I first found out that I was pregnant with you I was on my starship…"

"Columbia!" her daughter added helpfully.

"That's right, Columbia. Now a starship is no place for a baby so I decided to come back to Earth to work for Sam. Your dad was back on Enterprise though and he was so worried that you would come before he got home."

"Because I'm impatient!" Addie beamed proudly.

Erika tried to hide her frown as her daughter used one of the less damaging words that Veronica had taught her. "Well, you weren't impatient before you were born," she said, reaching up to touch Addie's cheek. "You were content to stay in my belly for as long as you could. Only your father didn't seem to realize that." She paused for a moment. "You know how when Daddy is on his ships we talk to him every night before bed?" Adalie nodded. "Well, he and I used to do that too. We would talk about how our days went, the people we had seen, what we were working on, and always how our darling baby girl was doing."

Adalie giggled. "Me!"

"Yes, you," Erika laughed. "You loved to kick whenever you heard your father's voice. Anyway, before we said goodbye each night you know what your father would say to me?"

Addie shook her head.

"He told me not to have the baby until he was home. He wanted to be there when you were born so much that he made me promise that you and I would wait for him." Erika sighed, remembering how Jon would plead with her. Of course she could promise. She could promise that the moon would stay up in the sky. It didn't change the fact that the timing of the arrival of their first-born was something entirely out of their control. But she wasn't ready to give Adalie that harsh reality yet. Right now she needed the comfort of knowing that everything would be okay. They would cross the bridge of Jon's deployment being extended when they got there, or so Erika hoped.

"And you know what happened?" she asked her four-year-old.

"What?" Addie asked eagerly.

"We waited!" Addie was born less than two weeks after Jon's ship docked in orbit and less than 24 hours after his debriefings concluded. "Your daddy and I were lying in bed one night and suddenly, I knew that you were on your way. So I woke Daddy up and we went to the hospital and then after quite a while, you decided to make your grand entrance."

"What about Frankie?" Adalie asked.

"Well, she was born when Daddy was right here on Earth. He was right there with me the whole time." And thank god he was, Erika thought to herself. It was Jon who had rushed her to the hospital and it was Jon who ensured that their second child wasn't born in her office at Starfleet Headquarters. Frankie's labor had been fast and dramatic, something Erika was hoping wouldn't happen again. She was hoping that baby boy Archer would take his time, just in case Jon's review tour took a little longer than expected.

"Adalie, your daddy loves you and your sister so very much," Erika said, brushing a lock of hair behind her daughter's ear. "He would do anything for you and anything for your brother too. He'll be home in time for the baby." Erika silently willed that to be true.

"Okay," Addie said, seemingly content.

"Now," Erika said, pulling the blankets tightly across the little girl. "It is time for bed."

She tucked Addie in, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead and promising to see her again in the morning. Somehow that added reassurance helped, especially when her daughter was struggling with the absence of her beloved father. Erika groaned as she heaved herself up to a standing position and Addie giggled.

"Just wait til you go through this, little missy. You'll be groaning just like me," Erika murmured.

She stopped in the doorway, turning out the light and looking back at her now resting child. Everything Adalie had said was something that had been flying through her mind ever since she realized that Jon's inspection tour would happen during her third trimester. What if he didn't make it back in time? How could she possibly handle all of this without him? Starfleet had promised that the review would only take 10 days, but at 36 weeks, Erika wasn't taking anything for granted.

She checked the clock, mentally calculating the time difference up on the orbital shipyards. Jon would be asleep now, she thought, trying to get a few more hours of rest in before they shipped out in the morning. He would call in the morning, she knew, to talk to the girls and to check on her. Jon had been absolutely furious when he received the assignment but orders were orders. No one knew that more than Jon.

As she made her way down the hallway, she looked in on her second daughter. Unlike Adalie, Frankie was almost impossible to get to sleep so Erika had gotten in the habit of saving her for last. Frankie was sitting in her crib happily babbling to herself. She stopped when she saw Erika.

"Mama?"

"Hi sweetheart," Erika said softly, walking over to the crib.

"Daddy?" Frankie asked, looking around.

Erika sighed. "Daddy is on his ship right now, Frankie. We'll talk to him in the morning."

"Promise?" Her girls were more alike than they knew.

"I promise. Now, let's go to bed."

###


	9. Chapter 9 - 37 weeks

Chapter 9 – 37 weeks

A/N: This one came out of left field. I had originally planned to go straight to baby boy Archer's arrival but this little bit wouldn't leave me alone. I hope you enjoy!

###

"How's Erika?" Trip asked, poking his head in the doorway.

"Still pregnant, thank god," Jon said, motioning him inside.

"I'll bet she's sitting at home with her legs crossed waiting for you to get back." Jon winced and Trip saw it. "What?" he asked.

"She tried that last time."

"You're kidding." Trip sat down in one of the chairs in the office and propped his feet up on the desk.

"When things started to pick up with Frankie she refused to leave her office. She told me that she would just cross her legs until she finished her work," Jon sighed, remembering the struggle. "It wasn't until her water broke that she realized that it was really time."

"Your wife is one stubborn lady, sir."

"Don't I know it."

"And the girls are all right?" Trip pressed.

"Trip, I know what you are trying to do and it isn't going to work." Jon frowned as he turned back to the padd he was trying to read. Trip was trying to make him feel just a little bit better about the fact that he was stuck on an inspection tour while his very very pregnant wife and two children were back home. The whole crew knew this was hard on him, hell the whole fleet did. But it didn't change the fact that he had a job to do.

The mission parameters were simple enough. Enterprise would warp to a set of coordinates half way between Vulcan and Earth, neutral territory for practice exercises. Now that the Vulcans were beginning to integrate their ships into the alliance, it was more important than ever that all the commanders be able to work together. Jon thought it would have been easier to get Frankie to go to bed at a decent hour. First they had had to deal with the simple matters of translation and conversion. It turned out that Vulcan ships used completely different units of measure and distance than the fledgling Starfleet ships. Of course they had, Jon had groaned when he realized that the ships had no way of ordering their counterparts to perform an equivalent maneuver. A whole new language of starship operations had to be created, one that was not biased towards the humans or the Vulcans. Jon had never realized how controversial the use of the term "cochranes" could be until he tried to ask the Maymora to cut power to their reactor before their simulated enemies detected the energy signature. He hadn't ever heard a Vulcan swear before that.

So the Diplomatic Corps had been brought in along with language specialists to help the integration go smoothly. Jon thought it would have been better to send counselors to keep the Starfleet captains from openly rebelling. Trip was used to dealing with the Vulcans. He was one of the only NX captains who was and he had been participating in training exercises like this one for the better part of the year. Dan and Emily, the other two captains whose ships had been tasked to join in the exercises, were not. After the first day, Challenger had taken several hits of friendly fire when a small survey ship failed to correctly decode their orders. Jon had shrugged that maybe they could chalk it up to good practice for what to do in the even of a hostile take-over of one of the ships, but Dan had beamed directly to Enterprise and demanded that Jon reprimand those "pointy-eared bastards." Emily had just shaken her head and sighed as she pulled Endeavor back to a defensive position in case they tried something like that again. It was not a great way to begin.

The most frustrating thing to Jon was that it was alarmingly clear that the Vulcans, for all their efforts towards a federated alliance, were content to maintain their own space fleet. They had had ships patrolling their corner of the galaxy for hundreds of years independently and saw no reason to give that up. On all other matters, such as economics, planetary defense, research, and trade agreements, they were willing and eager to fully join in whatever this interstellar compact turned out to be. Jon just hoped he would be alive to see it. Dan had nearly taken a swing at him after all.

But things had settled down after the first day and now Starfleet and Vulcan ships were carrying out coordinated practice strikes and simulated defensive runs in a way that he had never even imagined possible. He was just finishing up a report on the day's activities when Trip had showed up to let him know that his wife was calling. Instantly Jon panicked, but within a few seconds of talking to her, he realized she wasn't in labor and he wasn't about to miss the birth of his son. Erika was just calling because it was the time she always called, the time right before the girls went to bed. Jon had felt his whole body relaxed as he laughed and talked with his two little munchkins. Addie was still worried that he wouldn't make it home in time so he had to put on a brave face for her and Frankie had wanted to hold the computer herself and nearly disconnected them several times. Trip had come back in the office after the call had ended just to make sure he was all right.

"Well, I don't know what you think I was trying to do," Trip said as he leaned against the doorframe. "I just wanted to make sure you didn't burn down my office yet."

"Admiral's prerogative to commandeer any space aboard this vessel that might be vital to the mission." He paused. "And what do you mean yet?" Jon asked suspiciously.

"You know exactly what I mean. The last time you were onboard you nearly broke through a bulkhead with that damn ball of yours." A laugh escaped Jon as he remembered the incident. Six months earlier he had been conducting another inspection when Enterprise picked up a distress call near Berengaria. Jon had immediately ordered the ship to track it down only to have Trip tell him that Enterprise wasn't going anywhere for quite some time. Part of the inspection he had been sent to conduct was a full warp core shut down and restart, a procedure that wasn't exactly like flipping a switch. Jon had sworn, chucked the ball against the wall, and then calmly asked that the message be relayed to the next closest ship.

"Rob was six hours behind us at high warp, you know that?" Jon said with an exasperated sigh. "Six hours."

"And he still go there in plenty of time," Trip said. "Meanwhile, you traumatized the half of my crew that had never served with you before. Do you know how long it took me to convince them that you weren't insane?" Trip swatted him playfully on the back of the neck but Jon ducked. Erika liked to pull that move quite a lot. "I'm just saying if you pull a stunt like that again I may have to boot you out the airlock."

"Duly noted, Captain," Jon gave him a mock salute.

"And then Erika have to come here and kill me and wouldn't that just completely terrorize my guys," Trip muttered, his eyes lingering on a picture of Jon, Erika and the girls, the one personal item besides the water polo ball that Jon brought with him on this mission. It wasn't that he didn't think to pack anything. Rather it was that packing required having any time when the girls or the dogs weren't playing in his suitcase. It was almost as bad as when Adalie had figured out that she could fit inside his climbing backpack and insisted on being carried around inside it for hours. He really had had every intention to pack but some how life got in the way as it always did. Finally Erika had thrown some clothes in a duffle for him and thrust it into his arms before he missed his transport.

"I don't know what you did to deserve her," Trip said as he walked to the door.

"I'll let you know when I find out." Jon sighed and looked around the room. "It was good to be back on this ship, Trip, it really was."

"Feels like old times, doesn't it?" Jon nodded.

"Hey Admiral?" Trip called back.

"Yeah Trip?"

"What's this Veronica tells me about them trying to mount a secondary hull on my ship?"

###


	10. Chapter 10 - 38 weeks

Chapter 10 – 38 weeks

Jon ran a hand along the bulkheads as he walked. This ship had done well in the exercises; Trip had shown himself once again to be a brilliant and capable captain. Jon knew his old ship was in good hands. He enjoyed getting to come back to Enterprise every now and then, he really did. But right now he just wanted to get this inspection over with so that he could go back home before Erika decided to go into labor.

Jon stopped as he heard a familiar voice just around the corner.

"Has someone gotten a look at the port stabilizers yet? They took a beating during the last test runs. And get a couple of corpsmen down to the engine room. This ship will need to be up and on her feet again within the week."

"Yes, Admiral Hernandez," an aide said before running off.

Jon's face broke into a smile and he rushed over to pull his wife into a strong embrace. "Erika! What are you doing up here?"

"Well, you did win the coin toss this time around…" she said with a smile.

"Oh no. No. No. No." He put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back the direction that she had come. "Go back planetside where they are doctors… and hospitals… and baby blankets."

His wife just laughed and shook her head. "Relax, Jon. They sent me up to do your inspection."

"You?" he said, gesturing at her very large pregnant belly.

Erika rolled her eyes. "I know this is hard for you to remember but I'm actually the one in charge of this ship."

"Yes but…"

"If Enterprise isn't safe to fly, it's my problem." She folded her arms across her chest.

Jon decided that he was done being subtle. He rested his hands on her belly and looked her in the eye. "But why are _you_ doing the inspection?"

She shrugged and placed her hands on top of his, running her thumbs across his fingers. "Because I'm allowed one or two personal visits each quarter. I thought ensuring that the ship that my husband is on most frequently was in good condition should be a top priority. Besides, it is still two more days before they release you back to command and I was getting a little impatient," she said, leaning her head against his chest with a sigh.

"I've been on the line with Admiral Black all morning trying to get an early dismissal. Apparently, 'my wife might be having a baby soonish' isn't a legitimate emergency." He stroked her hair with his hand, running down the length of her ponytail.

"This is your job, Jon. You can't just wish it away when you get homesick."

"I know. I just like this job better," he said wrapping his arms around her.

"I know you do," she smiled. "Walk with me while I make sure you didn't break anything too expensive?" she asked.

"I would love to," he laughed, bending down to give her a kiss on the forehead.

Instantly, he felt Erika tense, not in her shoulders where she usually carried the weight of the world but in her stomach.

"Erika…."

"Not now, for the love of all that is holy…" he heard her whisper. Jon felt his eyes go wide as he realized what was happening.

"Erika…."

"This wasn't suppose to happen…"

"Erika!"

"What?" she snapped, turning to face him.

"Did you just have a contraction?" he asked slowly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

She nodded.

"Erika, are you…." She was about to answer him when he saw her entire body tense as another wave of pain began.

"Oh gods no…" she said burying her head in his shoulder. "Jon, we're in trouble."

"It's okay, Rike. Just breath. We'll get you back down to Earth right away."

Erika bit her lip to keep from crying out. "We don't…" she tried but her breath caught in her throat and she gasped. "We don't have time. Jon, this baby…"

"…. is coming right now, isn't he?" Jon didn't wait for Erika to answer. She closed her eyes as an even stronger contraction began.

Erika cried out in pain as the sensation swept through her body.

"Can you walk?" Jon asked but he knew the answer. Erika just shook her head. Gently, he lifted her up into his arms and began to carry her to sickbay. For once in his life he was grateful that they didn't run into anyone in the hallway. He wasn't sure how he was going to explain this one.

Finally, the doors swished open and they entered sickbay. "Phlox, we've got a problem!" he called out.

"I had a feeling I would be seeing one of you in here before this trip was over," the doctor muttered as he guided Jon over to the bed where he gently put Erika down. "I just didn't think it would be for this. How long has she been in labor?"

"Only a few minutes…" Erika groaned. "It just …." She stopped and grabbed Jon's hand tightly.

"It started suddenly," Jon finished.

"Hmmm, not uncommon for women in their second or third pregnancies," Phlox said as he began to take some scans. "Especially after having a previously fast labor. Rest assured, Admirals, everything is just fine."

"Except that I am in labor on a starship!"

"Yes, of course, except that," Phlox assured her as he administered a hypospray. "This should help with the pain."

"How soon, Doc?" Jon asked as he felt Erika relax in his arm.

"Admiral, you are only 7 cm dilated. You've still got some work ahead of you."

"Great," Erika muttered, resting her head against the pillow Jon had found. "I'm sorry, Jon," she said as he smoothed her hair back. "I shouldn't have come up here, I just wanted to…."

"Don't worry, Rike. Just breathe." He smiled as he realized something. "I guess I am going to win that coin toss after all, aren't I?"

###


	11. Chapter 11 - One Day Old

Chapter 11 – One Day Old

A/N: Sorry this one took a little longer to write than expected. Hope you enjoy! One more chapter before the end of this story.

###

At less than 24 hours old, Benjamin Archer was taking his very first shuttle ride. Erika had bundled him up in the blankets and hat that Phlox had hastily had the quartermaster from the spacedock ship over the night before and now her son was quietly resting in her arms.

Her son. Erika let the worlds roll around in her mind. Somehow she had always known that she would want a son. She understood boys. She had grown up with her brothers and spent most of her career wrangling the pilots of the NX program. She had actually been terrified when they learned that Adalie was going to be a girl. Boys she could handle, girls… she wasn't so sure about. But Addie hadn't seemed to mind her mother's lack of experience and by the time Frankie came around, Erika was excited to have a new little girl.

This time it was Jon's turn to be nervous. He had been absolutely natural with both of the girls, adapting to his role as a father almost instantaneously. He had always been so good with their nieces that it shouldn't have surprised her but she in those first few months she found herself envying his easy way with their infant daughter. Now it was his turn to watch as Erika easily slipped back into the role of parenting a newborn while he professed himself to feel wholly out of practice.

But now they had a boy. She hadn't believed the doctors when they told her that she was pregnant with a son. Somehow she was sure that they were going to turn around and tell her that it was actually a girl after all but they never did. Still she held her breath when Phlox placed a tiny bundle in her arms and said, "Admiral, you have a perfect baby…. boy." Only then did she really begin to relax.

Her labor with Ben had been fast. She went quickly with Frankie and even quicker with Ben as the rushes and waves of contractions grew in intensity. At first she had been worried; worried that Jon would be mad that she had insisted on journeying up to the spacedock in her condition, worried that it wouldn't be safe to give birth on Enterprise, and most of all worried at how fast things were going. She felt out of control and lost in a sea of pain until she felt Jon's strong hand in her trembling one. He held her tightly the entire time, whispering that everything was going to be okay and that she was doing just fine. She cried and buried her head in his shoulder but he didn't falter. He just gently stroked her hair and kissed her on the forehead. It was her husband's face that she kept her eye on when it grew time to push, her husband's calm voice and sweet smile that she held on to like a tracking signal when she felt herself begin to fade.

And then it was done. Then there was Ben. Unlike both girls, neither Jon nor Erika had known what his name was going to be until they saw him for themselves. They spent his first few moments of life just looking at him until finally Erika looked up at Jon and simply nodded. Jon's face had broken out into a grin.

"Okay then, Ben it is," he had said softly, reaching down to run a finger along the baby's cheek.

It was only later that she learned that she had been the first line officer to give birth on a starship. When the filled out Ben's birth certificate there wasn't a space to write "NX 01 Enterprise" as place of birth. For a moment, Jon had worried that there might be a technicality and their son might not actually be a United Earth citizen. But Phlox had assured them that their baby and his paperwork would be just fine, even if it took the administrative centers a little longer than usual to process it. Admiral Black, finally returning Jon's call, had called up a few hours later to say that Admiral Jonathan Archer was free to take family medical leave effective immediately. No one had bothered to give Erika official maternity leave orders. Starfleet offered them the use of one of the private VIP shuttles on reserve for the few people in the fleet who still out ranked both Jon and Erika and they had seized the opportunity. None of the news media knew about the baby yet and Erika wasn't exactly ready to get on one of the public transports with her newborn and announce to the entire planet that Admiral Hernandez had finally had that baby.

So they had quietly left Enterprise and headed for the spacedock's shuttlebay with Ben snuggled tightly in his father's arms. Erika had to stop herself from looking over at them every other moment just to make sure they were really there and this wasn't all a dream. Then she remembered the labor. Nope, this was real. Very very real.

"Shuttle Ersana requesting clearance for departure," Jon called from the pilot's chair. He turned around to give Erika a grin. He clicked off the microphone. "Been a long time since I've gotten to sit in this chair."

"Just take it nice and slow, okay?" Erika said, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't worry," he said, giving her a mock salute.

_"Ersana, you are cleared for departure. Safe journey, Admirals."_ Apparently Admiral Black had told someone in flight control just who was in this shuttle.

Jon started his preflight checklist but stopped to come sit down next to Erika and the baby.

"He looks like you," she said, gazing down at her baby boy.

"He looks like Simon," Jon said, equally captivated by their youngest child. "He looks like Simon and I had a baby."

"Jon..."

"He's perfect."


	12. Chapter 12 - Epilogue

Chapter 12 – Epilogue

###

Jon leaned his head through the doorway and smiled. His wife, his beautiful exhausted wife, was sitting on their bed, her long hair spilling over her shoulders and one of his old Stanford shirts and pajama pants loosely covering her. In her arms lay their youngest child, his eyes wide open as his studied his mother's face. Erika was gazing back at her son, murmuring to him softly as he lay on the bed.

"Is he asleep?" he asked finally, knowing full well that he wasn't. Erika shook her head. Jon turned to the two pajama-clad girls waiting behind him anxiously. "Okay, you can come see him."

Cautiously, they walked into the room, one girl holding each of his hands. Adalie pulled forward, eager to see her mother and this new baby brother but Frankie pulled back. Jon leaned down to give Addie a kiss on the head and whispered in her ear that she could go over to the bed, giving her a pat on the shoulder. He then scooped Frankie up in his arms, which seemed to satisfy her and she leaned her head sleepily on his shoulder.

They hadn't planned on getting home from the spacedock so late. By the time the shuttle docked and they made it back home both girls had gone to bed. After thanking Erika's brother for his last minute babysitting once again, and after briefly wondering if they should just wait until morning, they decided to wake the girls up to come meet their baby brother.

Jon had practically raced up the stairs, looking into Adalie's room first. His almost five-year-old daughter was fast asleep, her tussled locks of hair reminding her father immediately of her mother. Gently, Jon had leaned down to brush an errant piece back behind her ear.

"Hey, Addie…" he had said quietly.

"Hmmmm?" his daughter stirred in her sleep.

"Hey, honey. I'm home," he said and Adalie instantly threw her arms around him. "Did you miss me?" he had laughed as she clung to him tightly.

"Is Mama home?" she had asked.

Jon nodded. "Mom's in our room and she's got someone with her." For a moment, Adalie looked puzzled but then Jon saw a smile on her sleepy face.

"Is the baby here?" she asked excitedly.

"Yes, he's here. He came while your mom and I were on Enterprise."

"Really?" Adalie asked, disbelieving and Jon remembered how Erika had stressed to her that the baby would wait until her father came home. Apparently Adalie wasn't the only Archer child who was impatient.

"Really. Would you like to go meet him?" Adalie nodded eagerly. "Okay. Now, let's go get your sister."

Waking up Frankie had been slightly more challenging mostly because his middle child was a very sound sleeper. Once she had punched Jon when he had to wake her up from a nap and so that night he stood back a bit while he waited for her to wake up. Before he could explain what was going on, Adalie had nearly shouted that the baby was here. He had had to remind them to be quiet around the baby, just in case he was finally sleeping. Which he wasn't, Jon now saw for himself.

He helped Adalie up onto the bed where she curled up right next to her mother and then sat down with Frankie still holding on to him tightly. Both girls peered down at the baby who seemed to be looking up at them with the same curious gaze.

"Girls," Jon said. "This is your new baby brother Ben. He was born yesterday afternoon on Enterprise."

"Baby?" Frankie pointed down at her brother.

Jon nodded. "Yup, that's the baby."

"Remember when he was in Mama's belly?" Erika asked and Frankie tilted her head to the side. She looked at her mother closely and then looked at the baby. She looked up at her father and then over to her sister. She shrugged and seemed satisfied but not entirely comfortable with the idea. Jon couldn't help but laugh at how similar her reaction was to what Adalie's had been when she first met her little sister.

Adalie on the other hand was obviously excited about what was going on. She leaned up against her mother's shoulder and watched as her little brother began to fuss

"He's so tiny."

"You were tiny too," her mother replied.

"Really?" Adalie sounded suspicious.

"Of course. In fact, you were smaller than Ben when you were born."

"Is he going to fuss all the time?"

"Maybe," her father admitted. "He might be like you were when you were little, very fussy, or he could be like Frankie was and be as quiet as can be. We are still learning what sort of person he is going to be."

"When will we know what sort of person he is?" she asked.

"When he starts getting into all the same sorts of trouble that you two get into," Erika said. Jon gave her a look, but the girls were giggling.

"As he grows up, he'll let us know just who he is. He might be like you, Addie, or like me or Frankie or Mama or Uncle Simon or anyone in the family. He might even be his own special person. That is part of the fun of watching him grow up."

"And how long will that take?"

Jon frowned. "Every year you grow older, he'll grow older too. But he'll always be younger than you, just like how Frankie will always be younger than you and you will always be younger than Rissa."

"Is he going to be as tall as me?"

"When he is five, I'm sure he'll be as tall as you are now."

Ben began to fuss in earnest and Erika reached for his pacifier, rocking him slowly in her arms and whispering softly.

"Is he going to take a lot of work?"

Erika nodded. "Babies take a lot of hard work because they can't do very much for themselves. They can't pick out their own clothes like you can or eat their dinner like you can."

"Are you going to have to stay home to take care of him?" Adalie asked Erika. Jon felt his wife's eyes meet his. They hadn't actually talked about this. He had just assumed that Erika would take maternity leave of some kind since she had for their two older children. But then again, she hadn't been an admiral when Adalie or Frankie came around. He really wasn't sure what she wanted to do.

Luckily, Erika seemed to sense his confusion. "I'm going to stay home with him for a little while before I go back to work," she answered and Jon nodded.

"Are you still going to be able to take care of me?" Jon winced. He should have known this question was coming. All the books he had finally read talked about how important it was to ensure that the older children understood that their parents would still be able to care for them even with a new baby in the house.

"Of course, sweetheart," Erika gave their eldest a kiss on the head and wrapped her arms around her. "I was still able to be your mom even when Frankie came, wasn't I?" Reluctantly Adalie nodded. "See? There will be plenty of both of Daddy and me to go around. Don't you worry."

"You promise?" she asked quietly.

"I promise."

"So what do you think, Ads?" Jon asked after a moment. "Does he meet with your approval?" Adalie nodded.

"Good, because there isn't a return policy."

"Rike…"

"What?" she shrugged.

But Jon just smiled. He really couldn't stop smiling.

###

A/N: Thank you all for reading and reviewing this series! Part Four, "The Book of Ben," will be coming soon. Let me know if you have any requests for what you would like to see in there as Adalie, Frankie and Ben grow up!


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